• deltreed@lemmy.world
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    24 days ago

    Yes, but it isn’t fair to expect anyone to provide housing at their own personal loss. I agree that people need homes, and we’re on the same page there. However, consider it this way. If you could earn more by charging a higher amount, would you charge less out of generosity, or would you try to maximize your income? This applies to anything. If you’re selling a car, would you sell it for less just to be nice, or would you sell it to the highest bidder? People need cars too. You see my point?

    • Jyek@sh.itjust.works
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      24 days ago

      Then don’t provide housing at all, let the market be affordable enough that people can buy housing. All rental companies provide is a funnel to keep the impoverished from saving their money to buy a home they can’t fathom according anyways. Same thing with house flippers. Buying a shit hole and giving it a paint job should not make it worth 3x the value you bought it at. Affordable housing is not the job of citizens, it is the job of the government and the government is doing its job making said housing, more attainable through rent caps.

      • deltreed@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        If the government gets involved, the owners will just sell, making homeownership even more unaffordable and reducing rent options. What you want is less greed in the world, and that isn’t going to happen in its current state.

        • Dinsmore@sh.itjust.works
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          24 days ago

          I’m not the one downvoting you, but I think this is where you might lose me - I agree that people will buy housing and rent it out if they can make a profit, and we’ve had landlords doing that basically forever. But if the government gets involved and owners sell, I don’t see how home ownership can be more unaffordable. Basically we have a hugely constrained supply of housing. If, say, there were 50 skyscrapers full of apartments that went up overnight in San Francisco that charged $1000/month, rents would have to go down everywhere else because there would be the introduction of so much supply that nobody would pay more than that cost (because that’s the alternative to where they’re living now). Obviously that’s a fantasy scenario, but the various governments (city, state, and fed) all are not doing anything to move towards that goal, which would create supply equal to demand. If current landlords sell, then that would drive prices further down, not up - you’re literally increasing the supply again, and also because they will be competing against each other to sell, it should drive down prices for those homes as well.

    • discount_door_garlic@lemmy.world
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      24 days ago

      people don’t need cars the same way they need shelter and food. I’m sick of landlords acting like they’re providing some kind of social service when they financially benefit from the arrangement at the expense of the tenant, whom unlike the landlord has nothing to show for years of renting, where the landlord has now paid off their mortgage and has more capital to purchase further properties… Its an inherently self concentrating system - a renter will struggle more to buy a single property than a landlord does to add “another investment to their portfolio” through more favourable loan securitization and asset evaluation.

      Landlords provide housing the same way scalpers provide tickets - considering they amass a huge majority of a working individual’s income despite contributing nothing themselves and sitting sedentary for their serfs to pay their wages, I dont really give a shit what income maximisation they pursue. Anything more than a dollar is a profit, and one which they are just as likely to have “earned” from inheritance as they are from any actual hard work and skilful property quisition.

      If it’s so tragic and unprofitable to be a landlord, might I suggest selling up and getting the fuck out of the equation, instead of playing monopoly with the housing supply and acting like you’re a saint for refusing to fix the fucking mould problem, so I can pay for your ugly family’s next holiday instead of having a stable roof over my head.

      • deltreed@lemmy.world
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        24 days ago

        I have no vested interest, as I’m not a landlord. My point is that people generally won’t settle for less when they can earn more. Regardless of how essential the item or service is, businesses and individuals will always aim to maximize their earnings if the market allows it. It would be a poor financial decision not to. Whether someone feels resentful because others profit off of them (which, by the way, is all of us in America when we buy foreign goods who use children for harvesting raw materials or other labor), it’s irrelevant to the situation. It isn’t going to change until God changes it.